As expected, I have been able to increase the amount of poker playing that I've been doing over the past month or so, which means I should probably start writing about it more. So for starters, I need to get up my recap from this tournament last weekend:

I was taking a page from LJ's book last Friday and "worked from home", which is usually the key to finding good results in poker tournaments. I have played very few rebuys before, and those that I did, I don't think I've ever had great results. The $10 rebuy started out well for me, and I just went from there. After picking up the add-on at the start of the tournament, it only took me 4 hands to knock off a half stack.

Poker is easy when people throw their stack at you while you're holding the second nuts. Nothing else significant for the first hour, took down several pots with c-bets, and picked up the add-on during the break to sit at about 7,000 chips going into hour 2.

I think my favorite thing about this rebuy was that we had 48 runners, and 12 of them were eliminated in the first hour and didn't rebuy. 25% of the field simply was there to donate and give themselves virtually no shot at cashing. Simply brilliant. Here's the thing about a rebuy; even if you're one of those nits who like to play them, but don't want to spend money in them (Although if you don't want to spend money to begin with, don't play a rebuy), you can simply fold for the first hour, then take the add-on at the end of the first hour. You only have to pay the minimum of $30, and you can find yourself with 4,000-5,000 chips to do battle with going forward. And that's without even playing a hand in the first hour.

But I digress. So now, instead of 12.5% of the field getting paid, 17% gets paid, and for $30, I'm in a tournament with a $1600 prize pool. Neat.

After the break I was just above the average stack, and I sat back and played my standard game, which for those of you who know me is pretty tight, although I will pull some shenanigans if I have position. About halfway through the second hour I had an interesting hand come up. I liked the move at the time, although looking back I'm not sure if it was a great idea. I caught a break because my opponent was bad, and picked up a nice stack.

I guess you can get away with some hands when you have opponents like that. That got me up into the Top 15, and with the blinds always going up I was able to take down some pots, most preflop, mostly just staying afloat. Next big hand came at the start of hour three.

So that was a nice hand for me, bumped me up to somewhere in the Top 5 overall, and let me bully people a bit. A little later I busted a short stack trying to steal from the button with my in the big blind; I think he had 9-7 or something like that. Here was a fun mandatory call to bust a shortie hand.

Down to about 12 or so, and I'm sitting in the top 3 in chips, and feeling pretty good about my chances to cash. We hit the final table, and I think I was second in chips at the time. Shortly into it I took a nice chiplead with this steal attempt gone-wrong-gone-nice.

Guy left about 6,000 behind, and I opted to just make the call on the river since my flush was only 8-high. In hindsight this was a bad play by me, because with the and the on the board, I really shouldn't be too worried about the villain calling my raise preflop with higher flush cards. Not only do you leave chips out there, but you also don't eliminate an opponent when you have the chance. Weak play on my part.

Another big hand for me thanks to players loving to check and give me free cards.

I'm interested in what people think is the right play here on the river. I bet 11,000 because it was about half of his remaining stack. I thought a push might scare him away, but I was hoping instead of just calling he would commit the rest of his chips. I'm not totally sure I maximized my value here.

I have a nice stack here, almost 2:1 to the 2nd place person, but I wasn't able to wield it for very long, as the money bubble burst a few hands later, with two shorties, one with and one with all-in pre-flop against 8s who ended up turning quads, lol.

At this point we're sitting five-handed, and the good news is I'm one of two big stacks (There's one medium stack and two shorties), the bad news is he's sitting right to my left. I was concerned, because he seemed to be a pretty solid player, making a lot of moves in position and generally annoying me. However, once I actually got to showdown with him, I realized he was just really aggro, and not necessarily "good".

So this hand led me to realize that he will frequently bet out at any sign of hesitation from his opponent, which I proceeded to exploit whenever possible, and caught him making several river bluffs with complete crap. bigfranky's aggression would ultimately be his downfall over the course of a couple hands.

55/45 dog, so it was a nice catch for me, but I still think I like the call there. If I'm completely off base here I would love to know.

Crap, looking over my hand history, PokerTracker missed a couple hands I wanted to throw up here. They were just a couple sick hands ptownbrad and I had. First was me being priced in to call an all-in with A-8, only for him to flip over A-A. Then, later on, the guy was in total push-fold mode like an idiot, and I actually had A-A, so I lured him in, and he pushed with some crap, and turned trips on me. Bastard.

We got down to three-handed for a while, I was never the short stack, although I think we ended up being even for a little while. Eventually I built my stack back up, and then third place pushed into second place, and we were heads up.

Heads up literally lasted 4 hands. Hand #1, I complete in the SB, he pushes. Hand #2, he folded the SB. Hand #3, I complete in the SB, he pushes on the flop. So, I can see how this is going to be, and just plan on biding my time until I get a hand. Fortunately, I find AK on hand #4.

And there you go. Pretty unspectacular tournament for me, there was never a time when I was in danger, or a shortstack, as I chipped up pretty early on, and after the rebuy period I just never felt the pressure. A big reason for that was that my hands were holding up, I was 7 for 7 or 9 for 9 at showdowns going into the final table. I felt pretty good once we were in the money, aside from aggro franky, the other players were pretty easy to play back at, and I thought I had a good shot of taking it down.

It was a good cash for me, biggest one I've had for a while, and it's just nice to get back into the MTT groove, I've been out of it for a while. I need to get some tokens and start playing some more of my favorite deep stack tourneys, or play the 50/50.